Friedrich Merz, the CDU’s chancellor candidate, has described the recent joint voting with the AfD in the Bundestag as an exception. In response to a question about whether he would profit from AfD votes in a similar situation in the future, Merz told RTL and ntv after his speech at the CDU party convention on Monday, “I do not profit from AfD votes. It is unlikely that a situation like this will occur again, in a humanly reasonable assessment.”
According to Merz, this exceptional situation arose because there was no longer a majority government in the German Bundestag. “As soon as we have a majority government, a situation like this will not arise. It was an exception last week” he said.